Dragon Song

  DRAGON SONG

  Jonathan Moeller

  ***

  Description

  Dragons love attention, but wealth and fame can draw the wrong kind of notice.

  I don't like parties, and I definitely don't like crowds, but I promised the dragon Delaxsicoria I would go to one of her concerts, and I've run out of excuses.

  But I did save Delaxsicoria's life and she's a friend, so it won't be so bad.

  Except some of her family's enemies have decided this is a perfect time to take revenge.

  And unless I stop them, a lot of innocent people might die in the crossfire...

  ***

  Dragon Song

  Copyright 2022 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media.

  Some cover images copyright Photo 10219443 / Concert © Dwphotos | Dreamstime.com & Illustration 82931994 © Bezimeni Bezimenkovic | Dreamstime.com.

  Smashwords Edition.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  ***

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  ***

  Author’s Note

  This short story takes place immediately after the events of CLOAK OF SHARDS. There aren’t many spoilers, but if you haven’t read CLOAK OF SHARDS, you should probably read that book first.

  ***

  Dragon Song

  I was sitting in my new office on a bleak December day when the dragon walked through my door.

  Of course, he wasn’t in dragon form just then.

  In his human form, the dragon Polvimrandur looked like a handsome, fit man in his late twenties or maybe early thirties. He had thick black hair and deep blue eyes and tan skin tone that was either Mediterranean or Hispanic and somehow conveyed vigor and health. He wore black dress pants, a gray jacket, a white dress shirt, and a blue bow tie. The outfit was a bit strange, but he pulled it off.

  When dragons took the forms of humans or Elves, they almost always chose shapes of stunning beauty and intense charisma. Polvimrandur was no exception. In his human guise, he was Thomas Poole, history teacher at Thompson Street High School and the one teacher to whom all the students paid attention, enspelled by his effortless charm.

  He wasn’t a bad sort for all that.

  About a year ago, Poole had accompanied me and a few others into the Shadowlands. A bunch of crazy stuff had happened, but we had survived it, in part because of Poole’s help.

  I got to my feet, the wheels of my office chair rasping against the bare concrete of the floor. For the thousandth time, I reminded myself to get a proper chair mat for the damned thing. “My lord Polvimrandur. This is unexpected.”

  “Worldburner,” said Poole. He paused before my desk and grinned. “I’ve heard you’ve gone up in the world since we last talked.” He looked around my office. “Though, honestly, I think you deserve a nicer office. This place looks like a converted warehouse.”

  “That’s because it is a converted warehouse,” I said. “The building was cheap, which meant it fit the budget. What can I do for you?”

  “Well,” said Poole, “I’m afraid this is somewhat awkward, but I’m in need of a favor. Of sorts. Nothing onerous. Or even dangerous.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “You know that my cousin Delaxsicoria is coming to Milwaukee for a concert on the twelfth?”

  I nodded. “I’d heard that.” In her human guise, Delaxsicoria went by Della Sarkany, and was an internationally famous singer of…well, famous songs. I didn’t know enough about music to accurately state the genre, except that it involved a lot of guitars and drums and sometimes a piano. Della’s voice was the primary draw.

  I don’t know a lot about music, but I do know she was a hell of a singer.

  “I have been invited to the concert,” said Poole.

  “Okay.”

  “And I was hoping you, in your capacity as an agent and an officer of the High Queen, could accompany me,” said Poole.

  I frowned. “You’re…not asking me on a date, are you?”

  “Certainly not. In fact, if Mr. MacCormac could accompany us, that’s all the better,” said Poole. “An agent of the High Queen and a Shadow Hunter would increase the honor of my escort.”

  I stared at him, and then my brain caught up with the subtext of the conversation. Poole was sixty-two years old, and while I couldn’t remember how old Della was, I think she was somewhere around a century or so. That made them senior citizens by human standards, but by the standards of dragons, they were young.

  Like, maybe still even adolescent…

  “Oh,” I said. “You want a chaperone.”

  “Yes,” said Poole. “A chaperone to make sure my conduct remains honorable and dignified during the concert.”

  “I thought you said Della was your cousin,” I said.

  “Second cousin.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And you want to…um…”

  “Mate with her?” said Poole. “I am giving the matter serious contemplation. Of course, the courtship customs of dragons are quite different than those of humans.”

  I hoped he wouldn’t tell me about it.

  Naturally, he kept talking.

  “Mating means different things among humans, but among us, it is primarily about producing viable eggs that the female can hatch,” said Poole. “Naturally, Della and I have already engaged in intercourse while in human form.”

  “I really don’t need…”

  “As you might expect, while an enjoyable experience, it is only a pale shadow of the magnificence that is the full mating experience while in dragon form,” said Poole. “We consider intercourse while in human form an idle amusement and nothing more.” His brow furrowed. “But rest assured, I would never take advantage of the students under my protection. For I assumed a duty of care for the students of Thompson Street High School, and the mountains will crumble to dust and the sun burn to ashes before Polvimrandur fails to keep his word.”

  “Yes,” I said once he had finished orating. “So, let me get this straight. You want to…um, pay court to Della…”

  “I am thinking about it,” said Poole. “I have not yet made up my mind.”

  “Right. And you need chaperones to come along to the concert to make sure everything stays proper?”

  He beamed. “Exactly right, Worldburner.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. A headache was starting to boil up behind my eyes. Della was a friend, but I didn’t want to go to her concert because it would be loud and crowded. Still, she had invited me a few times, and I felt bad that I hadn’t gone.

  And here’s the thing.

  Poole was perfectly within his rights to request that I chaperone his visit with Della. After the events of September, I had a lot of responsibility now. Asking me to chaperone his sort-of-date with Della was exactly the sort of thing that came with my new job.

  Still, I appreciate that Poole was asking as my friend who had gone with me into the Shadow Waypoint and not as Lord Polvimrandur the dragon, son of Lord Varzalshinpol, honored guests of the High Queen.

  Suck it up, Nadia.

  “Fine, fine,” I said. “Let me call Riordan and make sure we’re free.”

  “Of course,” said Poole.

  I dug out my cell phone and called Riordan.

  The call didn’t go well.

  “Certainly I’m available,” he said, dashing my hopes that there had been some sort of other urgent matter requiring my attention. “Actually, I think Nora’s in New York right now.”

  “What?” I said, my alarm increasing. Nora Chandler loved Della’s music. Nora also knew that Della was a dragon.

  “I think she might be free on the twelfth. Would Poole mind two Shadow Hunters accompanying the Worldburner?”

  I repressed a sigh and looked at Poole. “Would you have any objections to two Shadow Hunters coming along?”

  Poole smiled. “Not at all.”

  Of course he didn’t.

  ###

  So, on the night of December 12th, Riordan and I drove with Nora to downtown Milwaukee for Della’s concert.

  We took my car since it was smaller than Riordan’s truck and therefore easier to park, though Riordan drove because I didn’t want to, and Nora tended to drive like a crazy person. She sat in the back, and though I had pulled my seat all the way forward, Nora’s knees still pressed into it. She was quite a bit taller than I was, with dark skin and dark eyes, and so physically fit that she probably could have lifted me over her head without using her Shadowmorph.

  She was also extremely excited. Like, Nora was a member of the Family of the Shadow Hunters. I had first met her when my brother and I had been getting chased by anthrophages, and Nora had mowed down something like twenty of them with a minigun in the space of four seconds. That suggests a certain kind of personality, doesn’t it?

  Instead, she was so excited that she was practically vibrating. It was almost like driving with a teenage girl on her way to her very first concert.

  “I know Delaxsicoria invite
d us to any of her live performances,” said Nora. She spoke with a northern English accent that she had informed me, more than once, meant that she was from Manchester. “But I just haven’t had the time. We’ve been so busy with all these new copies of the Summoning Codex, but that seems to have died down. And I read that Della will be debuting some of the songs from her new album.” I saw her grin in the rearview mirror. “Maybe one of them will be about you, tigress.”

  “God, I hope not.” She had already written one song about me. Granted, hardly anyone knew it was about me, but it was still annoying.

  “It was a catchy song,” said Riordan. It had also been a successful one. I did not pay attention to popular music, but apparently Mad Bad Wizard Girl had broken all sorts of records and won some kind of award.

  “It’s not surprising,” said Nora. “Della is the best singer in modern country fusion.”

  There we go. Della sang modern country fusion. Whatever the hell that was.

  We reached the Ducal Concert Hall, a big complex in downtown Milwaukee that sprawled for an entire city block. It was mostly a convention center, but it did have a theater capable of holding ten thousand people at once, which was where Della would perform. I saw crowds filling the streets in front of the hall, waiting for the doors to open. The streets were absolutely lined with cars. Parking had to be a nightmare.

  Of course, since we were personal friends of Della Sarkany, leading singer of modern country fusion, whatever the hell that was, we didn’t have to park with the common rabble. Our VIP passes let us access the underground parking garage, and Riordan drove down the ramp and into the lowest level. There were a lot of vans and a small bus parked down here. Evidently when Della went on tour, it took a lot of equipment, and given how much she loved clothes, I suppose at least two of those vans held her wardrobe.

  We parked in our assigned spot. Two people waited for us by the elevator. One was Poole. Today he wore a crisp black suit with a brilliant blue tie that I noted was exactly the color of his scales in his true form. The other person was a woman in her middle twenties wearing formal business attire – black pencil skirt, black jacket, white blouse. She had glasses, and her hair had been done up in a bun. Her expression furrowed with concentration as she worked with something on her phone.

  “Ah, Worldburner!” said Poole.

  The woman looked up from her phone and smiled. “Mrs. MacCormac? It’s good to see you again.”

  “Hi, Helen,” I said. We had all met last year when I had saved Della’s life from a cyborg assassin. Helen was one of Della’s retainers and basically acted as her personal assistant. I noticed the glint of a ring on her finger. “So Shawn finally asked you to marry him?”

  She blinked and then smiled shyly. “This summer. Lady Delaxsicoria sang at our wedding.” I imagine she would have insisted. “My lady sent me to wait with Lord Polvimrandur until you arrived to escort him to her dressing room.”

  Dressing room? We were going to Della’s dressing room?

  That hardly seemed appropriate.

  Then again, Della wasn’t actually human, and if Poole saw her naked in her human form, that wasn’t actually what she looked like. For that matter, in their natural forms, dragons neither needed nor wore clothing.

  Right. A hundred and sixty years ago, I had been stealing things for Morvilind and living in fear of Homeland Security, and now I was playing chaperone to two courting dragons.

  “Lead the way, then,” I said.

  Helen smiled. “My lord Polvimrandur, Mrs. MacCormac, Mr. MacCormac, Ms. Chandler, this way, please.”

  We filed into the elevator and went up. Thankfully, the elevator had been built to haul sets and equipment from the parking level up to the stage, so there was enough room for all of us. Though if Poole had been in his real form, he wouldn’t have fit anyway. The elevator doors opened into a wide corridor with a concrete floor and walls of black metal. Various men and women in black shirts and jeans were running around doing technical things.

  Helen led us through the chaos and came to a metal door guarded by a burly man in a suit. He was dark-skinned with a somber expression, though it relaxed a bit when he saw Helen. Shawn was Della’s bodyguard, or one of them, anyway. Not that Della actually needed a bodyguard. But dragons preferred not to draw attention to their true selves, and if Della beat a crazed stalker to death with her bare hands or incinerated him with her magic, that would sort of be a giveaway.

  Besides, she had Shawn to do that sort of thing for her.

  Helen smiled at Shawn, stepped to the door, and knocked once.

  “Yes?” came Della’s voice.

  “My lady, your guests are here.”

  “Oh, good, send them in.”

  Helen opened the door, and we stepped into an enormous dressing room. On the left was a large mirror illuminated in the glare of yellow lights, a counter running in front of it. A variety of makeup products covered the surface of the counter. Some of those products cost more than my car. A rack running along the far wall held a variety of dresses. Like, a lot of dresses.

  Two women stood before the mirror, both dressed in black jeans and tank tops, intense expressions of concentration on their faces as they worked with makeup brushes.

  The dragon Delaxsicoria sat on a stool between them, wearing her human guise of Della Sarkany.

  Dragons are vain. They’re a lot like cats that way, though they hate the comparison. Dragons love attention and adoration and having a large group of humans around them to fawn over their magnificence. They’re massively arrogant…but as far as I can tell, they don’t have the sort of malignant narcissism that a human with that degree of arrogance would possess. Like, if you insult a human that arrogant, he’ll explode at the damage to his ego. Try to insult a dragon, and you’ll get the sort of condescending pity that humans give to people who think the earth is flat. If a dragon thinks that you don’t appreciate his or her magnificence, the dragon will think that you suffer from obvious and severe mental impairment and might not be able to tie your own shoes or wipe your own ass without assistance.

  Or maybe I’m overthinking it, and dragon psychology is alien and can’t be fully understood by humans.

  Then again, Della was definitely vain. When she chose a human form, she took the form of a statuesque woman of stunning beauty whose combination of toned muscle and rounded curves couldn’t be replicated without six hours of daily exercise and an insanity-inducing diet. Her dark hair gleamed like a mirror, and her green eyes were the exact same shade as her scales in her dragon form. Kind of like Poole’s tie, come to think of it. She wore a form-fitting sleeveless white dress with a very short skirt, accompanied by thigh-high black leather boots with spiked heels. The damned things looked like torture devices.

  She didn’t turn her head as we approached because the women were busily applying makeup, but I saw her grin in the mirror. “Nadia! You came!” She had a rich, musical voice, one well-suited to singing.

  “Hi, Della,” I said. “Good to see you. This is all, uh…” I tried to think of something to say. “This is quite a crowd.”

  “We sold out,” said Della with obvious pride. “Milwaukee is one of the smaller concert venues in North America, but it’s getting bigger with the Great Gate.”

  “Great,” I said, since I knew nothing about the economics of live music. “You remember Riordan and Nora?”

  “Of course,” said Della. “You must come to the party after the concert.” I repressed a sigh. “I always have a party for the crew and dancers after the show and for certain special guests. Though I do appreciate you coming, Nadia. I know you have many responsibilities now.”

  “Well,” I said. “I guess even I need a night off.”

  “Hopefully, this will be a little less eventful than the week we met in New York,” said Riordan.

  “Oh, heavens, yes,” said Della. The two women stepped back, and Della scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. I had to admit her hair and makeup looked quite good, to the point where she didn’t really look like she was wearing makeup. “Brilliant as ever. Thank you both. Better get ready for the first costume change.”